The Right Tool for the Job...

I have learned quite a few things since starting my internship, but one thing that I learned was that you need to have the right tool for the job. The bakery folks are quite inventive with the way that they have come up with hundreds of ways to use one tool and they use it in ways that I have not thought of. A lot of the practices has forced me to look at my own kitchen and figure out what I do have and utilize while cooking and what I needed to get. Now I am not suggesting that everyone run out and get a lot of baking equipment, but I am saying that sometimes it is necessary to have a few basic tools to be successful in the kitchen.

At my internship I discovered how much easier it is to frost a cake while it is on a rotating pedestal like the one below. Connie has two of these and we use them a lot. I went to Michael's and purchased an inexpensive one (with a 40% off coupon) for $8.00


Connie (my internship supervisor) also has all of her frosting tips organized and labeled. As you can tell she uses quite a number of them daily.


In my own kitchen at home I have a lot of specialized tools for different jobs. I would say that in the picture below I use the mini cutting board (courtesy of my friend Claudine over at Good Things) the most. The microplane is also nice for various jobs including zesting lemons and grating parmesan cheese.


I can not express how helpful it is to have measuring cups and spoons of all sizes. I have measuring utensils for measuring both dry and liquid ingredients and both large amounts and smaller amounts.


It is so helpful to have scoops of different sizes for various tasks. I use the smallest scoop in this picture to scoop out uniform balls of dough to make delicious cookies. The one in the middle is a recent addition, prior to buying this scoop I used to use the top scoop to try and fill my cupcake containers with batter. The amount that the large scoop holds was far much more than the capacity that the actual cupcake pan would hold so the result was a disaster of cupcakes. Some were just right, some were filled too much and would often overflow, others would raise way to high and sink. So last week I purchased the scoop in the middle and it is just the right amount to fill the cupcake pan with just the perfect amount of batter to produce perfect cupcakes.


I also have frosting tips of all sizes and shapes.


Now if you bake and come out with inconsistent results I strongly recommend purchasing an oven thermometer. For too long I trusted the thermostat on my oven and I wondered why sometimes my cakes would take twice the recommended time and sometimes my cookies were dark on the outside and too crunchy. Well at Connie's recommendation I purchased an oven thermometer and discovered that our oven is 20 degrees cooler than what the thermostat/setting indicates. Since baking using this I have been pleased with the results.


So that is my little blurb about the importance of using the correct tools to try and obtain consistent and satisfying results. On another note at my internship I watch Connie with envy while she decorates a cake with one hand just moving her hand back and forth to create a border it takes her about 15 seconds to put a top and bottom border on a cake. I have been trying to get this and here are some pictures of the results. I did both of these cakes in about 10 minutes.

Busy Sunday, Cupcakes, Cupcakes....

I am tired right now, today I decided not to get drawn into watching TV all day so I got ready early and went out on the town. I purchased the ingredients to do a few crafts, make a nice dinner and bake some cupcakes. Have a look!

Saturday at my internship I had a good day, nothing too eventful. I talked to Connie a lot and I mostly observed her great skills. She had me frost the borders of a cake, here it is. It looks a bit nicer than when I was having a bad day.

Bad Day...


Better day...


After my internship we went to our friend Kellie's baby shower. Brian and I are going to be the baby's god-parents, it is such an honor to be involved. I made pulled pork (Brian had to finish making it) and we also made a baby clothes bouquet. It is made of onesies, baby t shirts, socks, and hats. It came out looking so cute!!!


Today I made a dinner of rolled tacos, rice, beans and salsa. I wanted to practice my baking and frosting so I turned Ina Garten's Carrot and pineapple cake into cupcakes. I then topped them with cream cheese frosting, little cream cheese carrots and a drizzle of homemade caramel. They were so good! I am sending a tray of them to work with Brian.


Then after dinner and dessert I wanted to get a little crafty. Nicole and I made some cupcake cards...

Here are the two that I made...



And here is Nicole's!

St. Valentine's Day & More

Valentine's Day was this Saturday and although I did not have my internship I had a painting Onestroke Open house at JoAnn Fabrics. The two hours of the open house flew by, but I think it was because I was talking to the knitting instructor next to me so much. During those two hours I was able to paint a rose canvas and a mini stool, have a look.


I told the knitting instructor next to me that I was embarassed to sign my name to this stool because I did not realize how fast the time had gone. I finished basecoating it and when I looked at the clock I only had 10 minutes to paint the flowers on the stool. I did end up finishing it in 10 minutes, but it is a bit sloppy.


Now onto Valentine's Day, when I saw this Valentine gift made on Martha last year I knew that it would be a wonderful token of affection to give. I wanted my gift to Brian to be more about the time and thought spent taken to create the gift than money spent. This Valentine took a while to create and my fingers were sore from cutting out the intricate detail but it came out very beautiful. Here are the steps of me making the gift.

Here is the template.


Finally after about an hour and a half I finished cutting out all of the details.


This view is not too impressive


But here is the unfolded heart...


Here is the heart glued onto the background which has the names of each cut out flower and their symbolic meaning such as "Lily of the Valley - Sensitivity"


Now you know that for us Martha fans that glitter is like a drug. This Valentine is to be displayed in a specimen box that is usually used to hold specimen bugs or foliage. I loved the idea but it was missing the jazz hands that is known as glitter, I glittered a plain piece of cardstock with ruby red glitter and then used pins to affix the heart into the specimen box.


And here it is all finished...


Here is the card that I made to go along with Brian's gift.


Brian's dad did not have any plans for Valentine's Day so we asked him to be our Valentine. We took him out to a nice dinner and I made him a card.


Internship was okay this week, Connie (my supervisor) was out of town in Texas and I really missed her guidance. Here are a few of the creations that I made.

Monsters


Dogs


Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes

Sweet and Salty Cake

Just wanted to quickly post about the cake I made tonight. My boss ordered it for Valentine's Day, it is the Sweet and Salty Caramel cake. Connie was right that using a rotating cake stand to decorate makes a world of difference!

I think it came out looking delicious!

Internship: Prepping for Valentine's Day

While love is all aflutter in the air and sweets prepare to buy confections for their loved ones us little workers have to prepare these tasty tokens of affection. Connie and I made cupcake and cake trays for Valentine's day. Connies were great looking and mine were okay. I first tried a bee concept around the phrase "Bee Mine" and although the first one came out cute I told Connie that I wanted to improve on the idea. Have a look...

This first one came out okay, I am not crazy about the amount of green, but I like the bees and their little candied almond wings.


Here is my improvement on the idea I swapped out an all green background for green grass and blue sky. I also changed the color of the flowers and made the cupcakes violet instead of green. I like this one much better.


I consider myself the kind of person who while I am learning likes to take my time and think about what I am doing. The reason that I do this is to think about every little detail and try to perfect it. I am telling you this because in my first week at the bakery it took me about 20 minutes to frost one cake. Connie told me that we had to frost six cakes. In about 20 minutes or less I had all of them done with borders. Connie exclaimed that I had frosted too many, haha, I told her that she said six but I did not realize that she had already frosted two. Here is my attempt at a simple birthday cake.


The amount of delicious and wonderul bread that the bakers produces on a daily basis simply amazes me. They are so good at what they do and their methodical preparation results in delicious baked goods. I will talk about the bakers later, here are some photos of their work.

It is so hard to not take one of these loaves of bread when they come straight out of the oven, slather it with butter and eat the entire thing!


The enticing aroma that is produced by these breads is a delightful thing in the morning.


This is the large oven that is used to bake all of the bread. I have been learning more and more how to use it, I don't know why but it reminds me of the oven in Hansel and Gretel!

Connie's Cakes

Every day that I go to my internship and work with my internship supervisor Connie I really to get excited to see the next thing that she has to teach me. One important thing that I have learned from Connie is that, "I tell the cake what to do, it doesn't tell me" and hearing this made a lightbulb go off in my head. One thing that anyone close to me can attest to is that I lack confidence. I would always get scared that my cake is going to come out horrible or that it is going to break in half when I lift it up.

I have taken Connie's words to heart and exert a bit of confidence when I am working and you know what? It is working! Connie has nothing but encouraging words for me and that has helped a lot with my confidence and fear that I am going to mess up. One day last week at my internship Connie and I had to adjust the shelves (which was a pain) and then Connie had to create some designer cakes to put on the shelves.

Have a look at what she created:

This frog cake is so cute, I need to learn how Connie made that rippled edge on the top!


A colorful and cute dragon! One thing that everyone asks me is if the figures are actual cake or just huge mounds of frosting, it is actual cake.


And here is a cute sloppy pig!


Here is are some photos of how Connie works her magic.

Internship: End of Week 4

Today was the last day of week 4 of my internship. My feet hurt! The other night my class was cancelled so I got a taste of what my life use to be like before this semester started. I came home, made dinner, and dessert. For dinner I made panko coated chicken parmesan and pasta with my homemade sauce. For dessert I made Boston Cream Pie cupcakes from Martha Stewart. Here are some pictures of my day.

At my internship we were low on buttercream frosting so with guidance from Connie I made a new batch. I think it is 80 lbs total!
This huge mixer is as tall as I am it is very powerful and the first time Connie showed it to me she told me to stand back. It can fling frosting far!


Here is the finished frosting. It is nice having a lot of frosting on hand to go and fill your pastry bag any time.


I don't know why I thought that this was funny. This box was in the cardboard crusher and to me it looked like it was sad with a frightened look!


Here are my cupcakes. I was tired so they don't look that nice but they tasted delicious!

Some Game...

"Apparently there is some game this weekend" was the phrase that I said to someone when I told them that I was making a lot of football cakes for this weekend. Cakes, cupcakes, footballs, confetti sprinkles. It is all so fun to do, I have really found joy decorating cakes. While at my internship Connie and I have to do what we have to do in order to get the bakery shelves stocked with the regular items then after that we can have fun.

I am not too much into baseball so I didn't have any interest in watching the Super Bowl, but I had a good time with these confections!

Here is a long row of vanilla cupcakes.


Here is another long row of chocolate cupcakes.


Here are some cakes that we had to make. One big thing that I have learned from working in the bakery is that when time is limited you use what is in your hand to do multiple tasks. Connie and I used a flat plastic bowl scraper, I would have never thought of using one of those to quickly frost a large amount of cakes.


There was a sale on these cakes so we had to make a bunch of them.


I am not that proud of this writing, but hey I am getting better!


HAPPY BASEBALL SEASON!!